The big story this week is that there’s another new video app in town: MixBit. Find out what this app can offer you that Vine and Instagram can’t, before learning about Twitter’s ‘TV Trending’ tool, and how teachers are now being targeted on Pinterest.

YouTube founders launch video creation app ‘MixBit’

Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, the creators of YouTube, launched a new video creation app, MixBit on Thursday 8 August.

Like Vine and Instagram, MixBit uses a ‘press and hold’ function to record videos. However, with MixBit you can capture not six, or 15, seconds of video, but 16 seconds!

MixBit also allows users to clip and stitch snippets of different videos together to make up to an hour-long video, which can then be shared on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and/or the MixBit website directly through the app.

The main reason MixBit is unique is that users can also remix videos other users have posted publically. Hurley and Chen claim that MixBit’s main aim is to transform the creation of videos into a collaborative process.

MixBit for iOS is available to download now, while the Android version will be ready by the end of September according to the MixBit site.

Have you used MixBit yet? What do you think?

Image source: makeuseof.com

‘TV Trending’ tool tested by Twitter

Twitter is going further encourage its users to tweet during the airing of their favourite TV programmes. A new feature is currently being tested for some users that highlights the most dicussed television shows on Twitter

Trending TV shows will appear as Twitter cards located to the top of your timeline, along with top tweets discussing these programmes. The first user to spot the testing of this feature, @ASG, also noted that predominant TV shows using the Twitter advertising model were also being shown here as other options to follow.

Additionally, Twitter will also provide users with details of official hashtags to include within their TV-related tweets.

This comes as no surprise as Twitter has already made several moves to make television and its network more integrated, including acquiring social TV analytics firm Bluefin Labs in February.

Image source: mashable.com

Teachers on Pinterest

Pinterest has launched a hub featuring content targeting a very specific segment of its creative users – teachers.

The ‘Teachers on Pinterest’ page, timed to coincide with the imminent back-to-school rush, has been launched with 19 boards for different school subjects and grades, as well as lesson plans. Each of these boards is ran and moderated by a Pinterest user who is actually a teacher.

Pinterest has partnered with Edutopia (an online resource for those working in education) to produce this helpful hub. Edutopia claims that Pinterest is one of the top five professional development websites for teachers – Pinterest estimates that around 500,000 education-related items are pinned each day.

Part of the reason for this hub is to encourage awareness of Pinterest among those not already signed up. It is hoped that those who find the resources useful will convert by signing up for an account and creating boards of their own.

Pinterest has not yet announced any further hubs but is encouraging users to contribute feedback on this one, so perhaps some other categories will be introduced in the future.

Image source: blog.pinterest.com

Infographic time

This infographic from Sentiment Metrics illustrates some of the challenges involved in executing good customer service on social media channels, and suggests 10 steps for ensuring success with this task.